Yass and Wee Jasper

A quick vacuum and tidy up of my things, and then out for the day before my landlady had her house open for inspection later in the morning. I ended up in Yass, a town directly north of the ACT, and went window shopping and generally had a look around.

Yass is not really far from Canberra and I gather a lot of people commute from there to work in Canberra. It took me about 30mins to get to Yass from the northern end of the ACT. So, commuting is quite a reasonable option. When I was in Melbourne I had a 10 or 15min car trip to the railway station, followed by a 45 or 50 minute train journey, and with the walk from the train to work my travelling time was always over an hour.

I found an antique shop in Yass. Oh what a beauty this was. It was jammed packed with stuff, and I had a fabulous time browsing. I’ve never seen such a place so chockablock packed with stuff. As I was walking into the store I heard a customer speaking to the storekeeper at the counter, “I can pay a few dollars to hold it.” I don’t know what he was purchasing, but it was the shopkeeper’s response that brought me to attention. “Don’t worry,” the shopkeeper said, “take it now and drop the money in when you can.” I couldn’t believe my ears. There are still some wonderful people around. Stuff like that renews my faith in the human race.

Back in the car, cruising around, I spotted a sign to Wee Jasper. I couldn’t resist. There was no way I could prevent myself from going to a place with a name like that. I had no idea in which direction it was, what, or where it was, but off I went. It took me along a narrow road through rural areas, with undulating hills. The wind was gently disturbing the grass in the fields, there was hardly any traffic, and it occurred to me that this is the sort of place I’d often wished to be when stuck in traffic in the city. The narrow road crossed the Murrumbidgee River and ended up at a general store, where I had lunch. There were a few other buildings, but it was a very small town. Wee Jasper boasts some caves, camping grounds, as well as walking tracks. I must get back there at some point.

A bonus to living in the ACT if you like to get out and about is that you are streets ahead of the folks in the larger cities. When I was living in Melbourne, Warrandyte was almost on the outskirts which means there was about a 20 minute drive through that area before you are starting to get into the less built up areas, but it takes about an hours drive on top of that to get what anyone might call the country. If I wanted to go south, I loved The Prom (still do), you have about an hour’s drive through busy city traffic before you get to the other side of town and the beginnings of getting anywhere. But my experience, living in this bush setting, a 10 minute drive puts you in the country, in 30 minutes you are in what seems like a remote rural setting, like Wee Jasper, a place of dreams for city workers.